Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines was a first-person action roleplaying game that came out in 2004 in the heyday of the FPS RPG boom, when titles like Deus Ex and The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind were flying off the shelves. The franchise went dormant for a while, but it has risen from the grave — but personally, I wish it were still buried.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, from developer The Chinese Room, brings back the FPS RPG, but it misses on so many marks. It offers players little beyond the experience of playing a hip vampire in a near-future downtown Seattle. I had played only a short burst of the original game, which offered more of a storyline, customization, and sense of badassery than all my time with its successor.
In Bloodlines 2, players take the role of Phyre, an elder vampire known as the Nomad, awakened from a century-long slumber by Fabien, a vampire detective. In what feels like a clear copy of Cyberpunk 2077, Phyre tears apart Fabien’s body, and the detective’s spirit is now embedded in Phyre’s mind. The two must solve who put the mark on Phyre’s hand and the conspiracy involving a vampire serial killer from a century ago.
The premise sounds interesting until you realize how the RPG and detective elements are pretty inconsequential. The “roleplaying” and “crime-solving” parts that should form the core of the gameplay barely exist.
Even for a vampire game, this sucks
Probably the only positive aspect of the game is the titular Masquerade mechanic. Vampire: The Masquerade, which started as a tabletop RPG in the early ’90s, focuses on vampires hiding from humans in a world much like ours, following rules known as the Masquerade.
Bloodlines 2 incorporates this like GTA’s wanted system. If you’re in public, double jumping, using powers or biting someone makes the meter rise from green to red. You can hide or climb away from humans to reduce it. Max it out, and vampire enforcers charged with upholding the Masquerade will stake you without any notice. This system works well with Phyre, trying to blend in with humans, and it does help with the idea of trying to live a life in the modern world as a vampire.
The rest of the game is kind of sparse. There’s no leveling system or stats. XP only unlocks abilities tied to your clan of choice: Brujah, Tremere, Banu Haqim, Ventrue and Toreador, all catered to different playstyles. If you want to punch people at superfast speed, you’d go with the aggressive Brujah clan or be able to stay stealthy with the Banu Haqim. As an elder vampire, Phyre can actually learn the other clan’s abilities as well, but that’s the extent of the roleplaying options available, as Phyre is going to be as powerful regardless of which clan you’re in.
Despite a slew of abilities, combat is pretty dull. You can hypnotize, freeze time, or make blood boil, but otherwise you’re limited to punches and kicks. Phyre has telekinesis to throw knives or shoot guns, but never equips weapons. Dodge and parry are available, and with enough practice, enemies can be dealt with pretty easily. All in all, the combat is so limiting and offers fewer options than its predecessor, which came out more than 20 years ago.
Phyre can do some damage with his claws.
Enemies are mostly low-level vampires called Ghouls, which are cannon fodder that can overwhelm you when surrounded. There are tougher enemies, but you won’t see them until near the very end of the game. Boss fights exist but are unremarkable.
The detective side is worse. After some missions, Phyre must return to his haven to sleep. While asleep, Fabien relives parts of his life, solving murders using skills such as fooling people, reading thoughts, or communicating with inanimate objects. Later, a filing cabinet provides all criminal records that may be relevant to the case, since apparently no one uses computers in Seattle.
At first, this seems like an interesting sort of side quest to the game, but solving these mysteries mostly involves just going from one place to another, talking to whoever, exhausting the dialogue trees that have hardly any consequences for saying the wrong thing, and then going to the next spot until you’re told what happened.
These memories tie into the plot: when Fabien goes back to the 1920s, he remembers a certain event that gives some backstory related to the current overarching mystery Phyre is trying to solve. But it’s just mind-numbing after a while because none of these characters are interesting at all, and like I said earlier, there seems to be no sort of fail state, as it seems impossible not to solve the mystery since the only roadblock you face is someone or something that you need to use Fabien’s powers on.
One of the elite enemies in Bloodlines 2.
Jam a stake in my eyes
I want to say the characters at least look interesting visually, but that wears off quickly. You’ll notice how devoid of emotion or detail their animations are.
The setting of Seattle has a cyberpunk vibe with snowstorms, but nothing changes over time. NPCs wander the street, either ranting about the cold, looking to start a fight with you or trying to have sex with you. There are about a dozen locations to visit, with one or two important NPCs at each. The whole city feels empty and bland.
Across the board, Bloodlines 2 is just a disappointment. It should be oozing with style and gothic vibes that make you want to paint your fingernails black and put on some My Chemical Romance. Instead, it’s just the same thing over and over again that feels uninspired and unchallenging. It also doesn’t help that when playing on my PS5, the game crashed multiple times. If you’re desperate to spend the rest of October playing as a vampire, go pick up Baldur’s Gate 3 and play as Astarion instead of this game.
Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2 is set to release on Oct. 21 for $60 on the PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles.
